KNOXVILLE — Tennesseans Against Damn Out-of-Staters, the anti-relocation lobby that pushed the state’s short-lived 2007 restrictions on inbound Californians, has reactivated for the governor’s race. The announcement came at a Tuesday meeting held in a West Knoxville chain restaurant that did not exist when the organization last met.
The reactivation hit a complication almost immediately. A membership audit, ordered as the first item of business, found that of the 61 current members, 24 arrived in Tennessee after 2019.
Among them is the new chapter president, Doug Reiner, who relocated from Sacramento in 2021. “I moved here specifically to get away from people like me,” Reiner told the room. “And they followed me. They always follow.”
Founding spokesperson Marcy Gregory, now listed on the letterhead as emeritus, attended by speakerphone from Blount County. She reminded members that the affidavits that new arrivals once signed — promising not to invite family, not to offer anything over asking price, not to write letters to the editor, and not to complain about the humidity — were never legally binding. “Which is the only reason most of this room is in this room,” she said, and hung up.
Reiner then produced his own affidavit, signed voluntarily in 2021 and framed. Members observed that he has since violated it in every particular except the humidity clause, which he says he honors daily.
On the race itself, the organization declined to endorse. Questionnaires went to all fifteen candidates on the November ballot and eleven came back, every one of them disqualified on review. Sen. Blackburn was ruled out for having represented Tennessee in Washington, “which is out of state.” Councilwoman Green was ruled out as being from Memphis, which the bylaws classify as “its own situation, under study since 1994.” One independent was disqualified when a member recalled him offering over asking price on a house in Maryville.
With no acceptable candidate, the membership voted instead to oppose turnout generally.
The next meeting is set for a restaurant the founding members still call by the name of the place it replaced.